Category Archives: 2001

Prosecutor Mary Crow’s trip to the mountains with her two college friends was supposed to be a celebration; she has just won her sixth murder case in a row. The plan was to stop in her childhood hometown of Jump Off, NC and then hike and camp for two days in the Nantahala National Forest. Their plan quickly goes awry. The women face two very different men who are intent upon hurting or killing them; one is a seasoned serial killer who has stalked victims in the forest for years and one is a man with a personal grudge against Mary. This is the first book in the series of Mary Crow thrillers.

The fourth Temperance Brennan mystery, Fatal Voyage, opens with Temperance arriving on the scene of a commercial airline crash in the mountains of Swain County. As a member of the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, she is charged with identifying bodies and investigating the crash, but her discovery of a leg that does not belong to any of the deceased passengers complicates things. She splits her time between investigating the crash and the leg, but soon finds herself accused of misconduct by a local politician. Canadian Detective Andrew Ryan, a frequent fixture in Brennan’s other investigations, also makes an appearance, trying to solve a third mystery.

Three of the four novellas in this collection are set in North Carolina. “He’s One, Too” is set in fictional Falls, N.C., which is probably based on the author’s hometown of Rocky Mount. The Practical Heart won the 2002 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for the best work of fiction by a North Carolinian.

In presenting the story of a simple English ballad, McCrumb traces the history of an American family. Lark McCoury, a popular country singer in Tennessee, is searching for a traditional song to record for her new album. The ballad, “The Rowan Stave,” came to the country with her ancestor Malcolm McCoury, an 18th- century Scottish immigrant who fought in the Revolutionary War and then settled in the North Carolina mountains. The story of Lark’s search for the origins of the ballad is interwoven with scenes from the past, as the song passes from one generation to the next before finally reaching her.

Pick Cantrell, a successful but controversial editorial cartoonist, has just moved from New York to his hometown in North Carolina. In the course of adjusting to his new life, Cantrell learns about his family’s connections to area’s rich textile history, most notably his grandmother Lucy’s involvement in a mill workers’ strike in the 1930s. The novel is set in the fictional town of Eno, North Carolina, most likely based on Hillsborough, and includes scenes in Chapel Hill.

Hannah Marsh is excited by her family’s move from Durham to fictional Rural Ridge, N.C., near Asheville. Her husband has taken a less stressful job, the scenery is beautiful, and she’s looking forward to spending her free time in the garden. Hannah is surprised to find that Daintry O’Connor, a close friend from childhood is also living in the area. Hannah and Daintry had a complicated relationship growing up, and these complications only continue in adulthood as Hannah finds herself increasingly attracted to Daintry’s husband.

The “Moon women” are three generations of women of the Moon family in western North Carolina. Ruth Ann Moon’s life changes suddenly when her mother and her daughter move in with her. Her mother, the family matriarch Marvelle Moon, is beginning to show the frailties of her age, while her daughter Ashley is three months pregnant, unmarried, and just out of rehab. The novel unfolds over the course of Ashley’s pregnancy as each of the women adjusts to life together, and to their changing roles in the family.

Nathan Williams and his grandfather live on Pea Island, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, in 1895. Nathan is fascinated by the “surfmen,” the African American rescue crew at the United States Life-Saving Station. Nathan dreams of joining them and spends all of his free time observing the surfmen and studying their books. Over the course of the novel, Nathan experiences the harsh injustice of racism, participates in a daring rescue, and begins to learn that there may be a better life for him beyond the island. Although written for a younger audience, this novel gives a wealth of detail about the surfmen based on research on the real-life rescue crew.

Figure Eight Island, the exclusive resort community near Wilmington, seems an unlikely place for a crime wave, but dead bodies are showing up all over the island. The first suspect is Carroll Davenport, a local developer who has had a few too many friends and relatives who died violent deaths. But Carroll is soon cleared and decides to pursue the case on her own. In the course of investigating the increasingly complicated case, Carroll covers a lot of ground, visiting many sites in the Wilmington area that will be familiar to locals.

Maggie Reid, a country music singer based in Greensboro, is questioned by the police when her former husband, the “Satellite Dish and Mobile Home King,” disappears. In order to clear herself, Maggie pursues the mystery on her own, becoming involved in the seedy underside of life in Greensboro, where she finds, among other strange personalities, a mysterious group called “The Redneck Mafia.”